Return of the Prodigal.

Saturday 28^th July

Olivia:

Hi,

Victor has been working in the bar to help out during the really busy times. He is learning the job quickly although to be fair he doesn’t have the skills to wait on the tables when the bar is packed out or to help with any food preparation. To run a successful bar, your food must be first class all the time and you simply cannot afford to let an 18 year old loose in that area. When the bar is packed out and I am bashing out pizza and fresh pita bread non-stop, I have no time for supervision of staff, so all this means that any young person helping out in the bar will get stuck on washing up and bottling up the fridges to keep the supply of cold Cokes in line with demand.

Victor is my son, but I can’t afford to treat him any differently to any other non-skilled helper, so he is the washer-upper.

Graham who had 5 years teaching experience in the past has managed Victor’s education path par-exellence, resulting in Victor doing fantastically at IGSE level and of course becoming absolutely bi-lingual. He is currently improving his French as well. Graham believes that school curricula should subject the student to a lot more work/life experience than they currently do and for this reason, we have just sent Victor off to live on a remote island off the coast of Murcia, where there are no bars, no drinking water, no shops, no people and no toilets. He went with 4 school friends, accompanied by the father of one of the boys, who brought a dinghy to ferry the boys back and forth to the main land to get shopping. All in all it was an experience very like some of the popular reality TV shows which seem to have taken over the TV like woodworm have taken over my aged aunties Welsh dresser.

Victor was on the Island for three days and as he loves all his home comforts, it must have really come as a shock to him to have to manage without them. Of course he really enjoyed himself.

Yesterday he set out to make the return journey. He left the island at dawn and had to row to the nearest town on the mainland, where he took a rushed breakfast with his friends of toast covered in garlic, olive oil and tomato. To cut a long story short they had to take several busses with a lot of waiting in bars in between to escape the 40oC temperature outside. When they eventually made it to Malaga, they were met by car by one of the parents who drove them 40km south to Fuengirola, via Torremolinos, Benalmadena and Arroyo de la Miel. Once they had hit Fuemgirola my sister Inelda collected Victor and he completed the final stage of his journey arriving at our bar shortly before closing time. I made him a kefta kebab, which he ate like a lion who had just come off a hunger strike. Filled new life experience he went to the apartment, slung his bag in the middle of the kitchen, left his shoes in my bedroom, the contents of his pockets on the lounge table, threw himself on his bed, after throwing his clothes on the floor and crashed out.